Wheel Drops

Did the GWR / BRW ever install wheel drops in their sheds? I remember most sheds I visited having a large hoist but not a wheel drop. Was this another GWR tradition or were the axleboxes so reliable that repair outside a works was the exception?

 

I have a pic somewhere of a castle with its wheels out , lifted on sheer legs . I will try to find it

 

don't think I wanna get underneath that

 

I can't find a mention of wheel drops in Lyons. All the repair shops seem to have had fairly serious lifting capability. Yet I have some vague feeling I've seen it mentioned somewhere.

 

Doubt whether there are many functional sheer legs left now. There is one in the shed at Grosmont, but I don't think it has been used for years - and its hydraulics have recently been cannibalised to repair the very similar items on the wheeldrops!

 

Didcot's lifting shop seems functional...

 

Yes it is, and has a 10 ton capacity in high gear, and a 50 ton capacity in low gear. I remember when the king arrived in parts. BR wagon with boiler on, in the lifting shop, boiler lifted off wagon, placed on another wagon. Frames in on BR wagon frames lifted off, placed on another wagon

 

85B Gloucester Horton Road certainly had a wheeldrop & the building in which the pit was situated is still there, though I don't know if the mechanical parts of the drop table are still in situ. I don't know the installation date but it was very definitely "steam era". A wheeldrop has far more uses than simply removing axleboxes. For example spring changes are far easier if the wheelset can be dropped just a few inches to unload the spring to allow it to be changed. Slightly O/T but Gloucester Barnwood (ex LMS) shed also had one & that of course ended up being a BR(W) depot.

 

I think it was John Aspinall who commented that he could not understand why some railways thought it better engineering practice to raise fifty tons of locomotive than to lower two tons of wheels...

 

Indeed, and I'm not impressed by those wood blocks under the cab............and over what seems to be a pit. H&S today would have an organism (sic)

 

I don't know, but I suspect that the answer lies somewhere in the fact that on many railways, capital for shed improvements came fairly low down the list. So new sheds might have got a wheel drop if they were considered large enough, but for many old ones, just replacing the old shear legs probably happened on a make-do-and-mend principle.

Tom

 

The stresses were probably lower than when a loco was lifted off all its wheels for a works repair. It is not usually realised that the boiler in these circumstances acted as a beam, considerably stiffening the frame structure.

 

Don't forget that expansion brackets at the firebox end

 

Perhaps we could look at this from the other way. How many wheel drops have survived into preservation. AFAIK no ner wheel drops have been made so those existing must be from old BR depots. I know the SVR has one NYM has been mentioned and I have a recolection of the Bluebell having one. .

 

There is one at the Bluebell, in routine use in the workshop - no idea of the original source though.

Tom

 

The RPSI have a set of shear legs at Whitehead (originally from York Road), which are mostly used for bogie lifts. They also have a wheel drop (RPSI built) which is positioned very conveniently beside the wheel lathe!

Keith